


This Age Of Our Dreams

by musicaldaydreamer



Category: Pocket Monsters: X & Y | Pokemon X & Y Versions
Genre: Gen, I just wanted to explore this, Immortality, Platonic Relationships, implied sad stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 10:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5371316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicaldaydreamer/pseuds/musicaldaydreamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little "What if?" concerning the end of X/Y. Spoilers for those games!</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Age Of Our Dreams

Serena is twenty when it first occurs to her.

She’s washing the family Rhyhorn and her mom is standing in the doorway, drying a teacup, reminiscing about the first day they arrived in Kalos. She smiles fondly. _You haven’t changed a bit._  
It’s been four years. Something stirs in her memory but Serena laughs it off. Of course her mother would say that, she always got stuck washing Rhyhorn then too. She forgets about it until later that night, and when she does recall the remark it’s as a joke, chattered to Shauna as she gets ready for bed.  
Shauna wonders about it for a while after they hang up.

 

At twenty-five Serena is still working at the Looker Bureau. It pays pretty well, and she’s always happy to give Emma a hand in helping out the city. She’s walking back from Lumiose Press, complaining to Emma about how the cab driver- who couldn’t have been any older than Serena- had called her “kid” yet again on the way over, when her partner accidentally cracks her.  
“Well, you do have one of those young faces. You look like a kid, kind of. Actually, I hadn’t really noticed, but you don’t look much different than when I met you.”  
Serena laughs again, but it trails off- partially because she’s already gotten the “You look really young” schtick today, but mostly because some long-buried alarm bells were beginning to go off.  
Emma asks her what’s wrong, and Serena muffles those alarm bells because Emma doesn’t need to worry. She tells her she just gets that a lot.  
Later that night she goes home and looks at pictures of herself from the last ten years. And she knows, deep down, and she knows who to ask to be sure. But she’s tired and a little afraid, and so she leaves it.  
(When, the next day, Xerneas confirms it, Serena isn’t even surprised. She’s just quietly afraid.)

 

At thirty Serena’s parents know there’s something wrong. She has long since moved away, but they see each other often, and when she leaves they’re always left with the feeling that she should still be at home, being taken care of- never mind that they’re both almost seventy, Serena looks like a teenager still. She wears makeup to hide it, but her mother can tell she doesn’t look more than a year or two older than when they first arrived in Kalos. They gently prod, ask her if anything’s wrong, but she just brushes it off. She says she stays so young by keeping busy and spending time with her Pokémon, and changes the subject. Her parents let the topic slide, wondering yet again if perhaps it’s simply an effect of spending time around Xerneas. They’ve tried pressing the issue in the past, and they know not to do it again.  
Serena has never told her parents the full story of what happened that day, but she does eventually open up to Emma. Emma, who thinks it’s the most amazing thing ever, who hears Shauna joking that the Bureau is home to a team of superheroes and latches right on to it. Serena isn’t nearly so enthusiastic, but she appreciates it.

 

At forty, Serena moves back home to Vaniville Town. Her parents are glad of the help, and especially glad that their daughter is closer to home. They resolutely ignore the fact that she is really twice as old as she looks, and she tells them stories about cases she has taken on with Emma.  
At forty-seven she tells her mother that she will always love her. She doesn’t know if she understands, but it does seem to bring her some comfort. When Serena is forty-nine, she promises her father she will never forget him as long as she lives, and leaves Vaniville Town forever.  
She rents an apartment in Lumiose City with Calem and Shauna for a few weeks and starts working part time at Hotel Richissime. It pays well and the apartment is comfortable, but what really matters to Serena is the closeness of her old friends. The light in her dark time is the knowledge that she isn’t alone. She runs her Pokemon every day through the alleys of the city, and on the weekends she, Shauna and Calem visit the Pokemon Village and let Xerneas run around and play with the wild Ditto.

 

When she is sixty years old Serena develops a case of wanderlust. She wonders if it’s a side effect of immortality, a strange desire to see the world, but she always thought it would start later.  
She doesn’t get far.  
Shauna and Calem find her in Geosenge, crying. They’ve all avoided going there since that incident, and especially since they discovered what it had done to them. Serena isn’t quite sure why she came here, but it brings back confusing memories and emotions. Lysandre. Xerneas. Saving the world. What it had ultimately meant for her. A man passes and comments how much they look like some nice kids he’d met as a boy, and for the first time, the pure and utter _strangeness_ of it all sets in.  
Serena starts to laugh.

 

It’s at eighty that Serena decides.  
She’s been living with her friends for twenty years now, and she’s been working at Restaurant Le Wow for ten. She loves it there; she sees all kinds of people, eating and battling and talking. Really, seeing all those people energizes her, and that’s most of what convinces her of something she never thought she’d believe.  
Being immortal isn’t so bad.  
When Serena had met AZ and heard his story, she’d become convinced that living forever was the most horrible thing in the world. For him, it had been. And for fifty-five years she had been trying to resign herself to the same fate. Trying to come to terms with facing milennia of loneliness and pain.  
But that fate wasn’t hers. Serena wasn’t alone. There were sad times, yes, but most times weren’t. And the more she watched people, the more she saw of the world… The more she loved it. Kalos was a beautiful place full of people who were, by and large, very kind. Filled with Pokémon who thrived. And it was where her best friends in the world were. She has seen this region- in good and in bad. And she realizes she and her friends have the power to protect it, to help it grow, by using what they know.  
They’ve been telling her that for years, really, but it took her longer to understand.

_Let us make this a new age  
Where we show our gratitude_

_The point where we’re all the same:  
There it lies, the future we seek._

For the first time in a long time, Serena feels deep contentment. The future is looking bright.


End file.
